Having completed the archiving of all the A&B Computing discs, I have turned my attention to making all of the supplementary information about the games and utilities available. Here is Ghosts, by Kenton Price, as it appeared in the magazine, with the game presented in the sidebar.
When I was very young, we went to Winnlater Forest in Keswick and these two games were on a museum exhibit there. I had never seen them again until an eBay auction a few weeks ago. Now I've managed to archive them. Screenshots soon... www.everygamegoing.com/litem/Orient...
Searching through a box of BBC games recently I found this cassette which wasn't yet available online. To make it available requires a number of steps. The first is to create the entry. The second is to scan the instruction manual and media (in this case cassette).
Spent today scanning this book for the Acorn Electron: Applied Assembly Language On The Electron. I need to work through the examples in this and learn a bit more about 6502 - minimising instructions makes you a better developer.
www.everygamegoing.com/lpublisher/p...
The Yorkshire Boys' full PD library has been found and uploaded...
www.everygamegoing.com/larticle/the...
Working backwards one issue to 5.12, I found this utility for the BBC that acts as an alternative to *SPOOL and *EXEC. Not sure if it's useful but it's now archived and will be available soon from www.8bs.com and www.everygamegoing.com
Well that's rubbish. The A&B Simple Disc Menu, which is the only type-in in Vol. 7 No. 2, doesn't work at all. It doesn't seem to include the all-important lines that actually display the catalogue, so it's totally useless. Oh well, plenty of other menus to choose from.
Is there anywhere these Electron tunes can be downloaded (so I can try them on the real hardware)?
Another A&B companion disc completed/typed up. Looks like the amount of programs per disc is decreasing now, with A&B concentrating more on the Archimedes than the BBC. If you type 2025 for the Calendar Printer, you get the message "Who's gonna be around to want that?" ;-)
...And another one, only a few utilities on this one but the *DRIVE command for ADFS might well be useful for any protected commercial software which required DFS. Available from www.8bs.com
A&B Computing 6.10 companion disc rolls off the presses. This one includes a tutorial on reading music, a tutorial on logic gates, a 3D pottery demonstration and a betting helper. I love these magazines that really put the target computers to significant use. (Available from www.8bs.com)
The new A&B companion discs are now all available for download from www.everygamegoing.com. I think there are a few more to do, and also The A&B Collection Volume 1 which was a standalone magazine from 1985. Welcome to 2025.
Happy New Year 2025 (The pic comes from Joe Lavery and was originally included as a slideshow of pics illustrating the power of AMX SuperArt for the BBC Micro).
Another A&B companion disc rolls off the presses, this one notable for not only the Stackless Fill demo but this comprehensive music/envelope utility: Maestro which fills a whopping four pages of the magazine and has plenty of m1% and ml% variables which are a bugger to tell apart.
Another intriguing BBC machine code utility buried in the back pages of A&B 6.09 - "Stackless Fill" - a fast executing fill routine written in "illegal" 6502 assembler. Includes this funky little demonstration showing how it works.
Another companion disc rolls off the EGG presses. All the games and utilities come from the "Programming Plus" section at the end of each issue of A&B. This will be available from www.8bs.com soon...
Intriguing little Sideways ROM Scroller for the Master 128 buried within the pages of A&B Computing 6.08. Hopefully I'll have finalised this companion disc by the end of today. 6.05 and 6.07 have been uploaded to www.8bs.com if you can't wait to try Battle Hill.
The previous A&B discs are all available on everygamegoing.com by just searching by "A&B Computing" as "Game". The first two entries showing Gardenquest shouldn't be there and I'll remove them soon. Download by clicking the disc icon. The newer discs aren't there yet.
A&B Computing 6.08 includes this Patience game by Stephen J. Farr which, as far as I'm aware, hasn't been typed up or archived on any of the BBC web sites so far. I'm typing them up in BeebEm with a full page scan in Irfanview as background.
Amazing!
We're spending this Xmas working through the A&B Computing issues we've never paid much attention to. Volume 6 No 7 contains this Lightshow demo which runs on all machines - never seen it before, it's pretty cool. Disc will be available on www.8bs.com soon.
A&B Computing 6.05 companion disc is complete. Will be uploaded to www.8bs.com soon for all those interested in adding it to your BBC collection.
Battle Hill working properly. It came before Worms made this sort of two-player tactical blasting a bit more fun. Computer opponent is pretty intelligent too.
Half-finished Battle Hill with half the hill missing and an error message displayed "Arguments at line 280"
Trying to preserve Battle Hill from A&B Computing by re-typing it from the magazine today. Not quite there yet.